


It took you long enough.

by millygal



Series: Stydia's comment fic meme [8]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Love story!, Season Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 17:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal
Summary: The Ninth Doctor finally understands his place in the grand scheme.





	It took you long enough.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelus2hot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelus2hot/gifts).



> Written for angelus2hot's prompt - Doctor Who 2005, Nine/Rose, in all the universe you belong to me.
> 
> THANK YOU to jj1564 for her tireless beta work!! And Stir for her read throughs and amazing comments!

The glittering vista of time and space opens up before him. A landscape sculpted out of the stars and pathways yet to be travelled. It rushes through him, fills his head with all that was and will be, all that _could_ be.

It burns so brightly it sheds light on memories long since blanketed in shadows and dust. It blasts the top of off boxes long ago nailed shut, locked away behind rewrites, rash decisions and running for his very many lives.

The Doctor remembers who he is because he _is_ **constant**. His name has changed, and his face, but he’s always been able to taste the Universe on the very tip of his tongue, scent it in the air around him. Even when surrounded by fish and chips and humans and London streets, or worlds awash in colours they’ve yet to invent names for, he can _feel_ everything.

Timelord Science - his head has always been bigger on the inside. 

Problem is, as much as Rose can’t take the Vortex, neither can he, not really, not for prolonged periods. At one time maybe. When he was young, when his hair was white and wispy and he could feel the pull of possibility tugging at his coat tails and telling him to grab Susan, and escape the humdrum libraries and legislations of his people. 

Today he’s old, so old. Nine hundred and change, and the clock’s still running and he can’t handle all that _everything_ squashed into the corners of his consciousness. 

Behind the golden hues and echoes of the past, the Doctor can see one thing, one single thing that stops him floating away on the receding tides.

He can _see_ **her**.

She stops him being swept out to sea and he knows without a shadow of a doubt she belongs to him. She was born to meet him, to run _with_ him.

Rose.

There is the prone figure lying on the floor of the space station, sleeping softly, as if she hasn’t just played house with everything the Universe has to offer.

And there is the woman she will become. 

That woman will love him for the rest of her life, and she will relish the sorrow of losing him only to find him again. To cling to that small part she gets to keep. One heart, bad attitude, spiky hair, horrendous taste in shoes. 

A man.

He will become a man.

The Doctor finds himself saddened that _he_ won’t be there to witness it. Someone else will be wearing his memories like a badge of honour, and he supposes that’s better than nothing.

As Rose sleeps and he begins to morph into someone wholly different - and yet so similar it’s painful - the Doctor suddenly understand his role in all of this.

She wasn’t born for him. He was born for her.

Nine hundred years of wandering and finally he understands.

Took you long enough.

Rose stirs, is confused and scared, but she’s still Rose. She’ll always be Rose. Someday she’ll just be _more_ Rose than she’s ever been, that’s all.

What he wants to say is I love you. What he actually says is you were fantastic. He hopes she knows those three words are the only three words he can manage right now.

Some day.

He’ll say it some day.

And every day after that.

Until he doesn’t remember what the Universes tasted like, until he can’t see the maybe or the possibly, or even the perhaps.

He won’t remember those things, but he’ll _always_ remember her!

 

 

  
Fin


End file.
